The PC-BSD team has released a first beta of PC-BSD 1.2. From the changelog: "updated ports to current as of 6-26-06; added DBSD Network/User Toolset into Control Panel; convert PC-BSD tools to Control Panel modules;" and much more.

I've been using it since 1.0 and enjoy it. Feels very solid. I had problems with my nForce4 ethernet driver and am still having problems getting twinview (dual monitor desktop) working. Nevertheless, it's a great OS. Highly recommended.

Im a bsd'er through and through since the old days but my current laptops ACPI doesnt work and GEOM barfs with odd big_read type errors, I cant even boot pc-bsd without acpi... sigh. sofar I'm stuck in arch linux until fbsd gets its act together on acpi...

PC-BSD is not perfect...yet But concentrating our effort on security and spending more time on testing new features, we can master OS that is easy to install and suitable for all kind of users. Right now I'm testing first journaling filesystem for FreeBSD (gjournal) and so far it looks promising- next releases may contain this great "stupidfriendly" filesystem enchancement. I think that journaling is vital for server environment and we already got plans for server side development. Laptop users would like swap space encryption and memory based tmp filesystem- so nobody can extract your passwords and private data from stolen drive. And for corporate environment we have plans for installation over network, terminalserver and automated backup/restore features.

Someone may ask, "Why we release so frequently?", but "Why not?" if we can do it and there is so many enchancements that needs testing/tweaking- better sooner than later...

Yes, ACPI is a big problem. If it helps, then you can boot up and install in "safe mode" (look at boot menu) with ACPI enabled. PC-BSD is one of the pioneers of desktop FreeBSD distributions and we have to hammer out all problems that is not so important on server side.

I love PcBSD and think it is really shaping up to be nice os. One of my main problems with it is it's lack of support to read and write to linux filesystems (reiserfs, XFS, JFS) And support for ext2 and ext3 is quite limited. One would think with these filesystems being opensource that there would be kernel or even user level drivers that would read and write to these volumes.

I must say, PcBSD is the most polished desktop nix I have used aside from OSX and I really hope they keep up the good work.

I think with a little more manpower on the development team PcBSD could really be a large force in the desktop nix market and down the road possibly even a force in the proprietary desktop market.

I can't say enough good things about PC-BSD. I just wiped the XP partition on this computer. (would not stop crashing - I want my money back!).
So, I installed PC-BSD on it. I was amazed at how easy it was to install and how really professional it looks. The system has a solid feel and I have encountered practically no bugs or at least it has not crashed yet. (I'm not a programmer so I would not no a bug if it hit me in the face)
I also like the PBI system. It was nice to be able to install programs so easily and actually have them work!
Anyway, I hope that this OS will continue to grow and grab more publicity.

I have been using PC-BSD exclusively on my laptop (HP NX6110) and have to say it works like a charm. It has been very easy to set up the WiFi, a bit of a hassle in Linux, and my screen resolution was correct from the first boot.

I have been very satisfied with the installer and the reliability of the OS. I am not a fan of the PBI's and have gotten quite used to the ports system. They have proven to be much more reliable for me.

I installed the latest beta version and all I have to say is... WOW!! It has all a regular Windows user needs. It's so easy to install and to add software, just like on Windows, with 2 clicks you install applications. And it's got it all, codecs, good software that work out of the box, I almost didn't have to type commands to have everything set up to my taste. PC-BSD is only missing momentum. Good luck to the PC-BSD team!

I do think they should incorporate a graphical ports front-end similar to the one used by DesktopBSD. Why not give users the extra choice, especially since there's only a small selection of FreeBSD's 15,000+ ports available in PBI format?

Also, they need to work on making GTK fonts nicer by default - again DesktopBSD has the edge here, since it automatically runs the clearlooks theme as soon as it is installed (and I believe it is automatically installed if you install the DVD version of DesktopBSD).

Both PC-BSD and DesktopBSD failed to configure X correctly - I had to run xorgconfig and fix things manually. If there was a way for the installer to recognise when it needed input (e.g. 'What monitor do you have?') and ask for help, this would be nice, too.

I also had to disable my USB controller in my PC's BIOS to get PC-BSD & DesktopBSD to install (re-enabling it afterwards, of course). This doesn't happen when installing FreeBSD itself.

But overall, PC-BSD is making remarkable progress, especially considering the relatively limited manpower they currently enjoy. Well done!

As far as I know there is ca 50.000 iso downloads of 1.* versions from mirrors. We have no statistics about usage, but this may change in near future. Plan is to design live counter that shows on pcbsd.org homepage how many computers with unique signature(ssh maybe) are booted up in 24h period(all over the world, pcbsd os rise "flag" on server database for 24h and "flag" is dropped when there is no activity in 24h). This is like *cough* microsoft verification *cough* but anonymous. It someone feel unsafe/paranoid with this feature then she/he can disable it from PC-BSD System Tool.